Hong Kong: two arrested for possessing ‘seditious’ children’s book
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Loading... - Daisy Song
- 21 Mar 2023
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Hong Kong’s national security police have arrested two men for possessing children’s books deemed seditious by the authorities, in the latest of a series of moves that underline the state of civil freedoms in the city.
The two men, aged 38 and 50, were arrested and detained after police and customs officers searched their homes and offices and found copies of “seditious publications” that allegedly “incited hatred or contempt” against the Chinese and Hong Kong governments and the judiciary, according to a police press release cited in the local media.
Police also alleged that the books could “incite others into using violence and disobeying the law”, adding that they were related to a concluded sedition trial.
The Chinese-language Mingpao newspaper reported that the publications were sent from Britain to Hong Kong and included several copies of illustrated children’s books in a series that portrayed Hongkongers during the 2019 unrest as sheep trying to defend their village from wolves, an apparent reference to the mainland Chinese authorities.
The pair have been released on bail but must report to police next month, Mingpao quoted police as saying on Wednesday.
The books were ruled by a court as seditious in a high-profile trial in 2022, in which five speech therapists were jailed for 19 months for “conspiring to publish, distribute and display three books with seditious intent”.
Police warned parents at the time to destroy copies of the books because they were “too radical and instilled in children the ideas to confront and oppose the government”.
The convictions used a colonial-era sedition offence that authorities have deployed alongside the Beijing-imposed national security law to stamp out dissent. Read More…
